PP&D 4 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: World War I, Billy Brooks, White Supremacy
27 Apr 2018
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Week 8 Reading Responses
Five Myths About Public Housing
●Liberals believe public housing concentrates poverty and epitomizes top-down, bland
urban planning
●While conservatives see it as “one of the world’s last socialistic schemes”
●More than 2 million people live in publicly owned rental housing
●Myth: public housing residents want to escape it
○Realistically nearly all the nations public housing have wait lists
●Myth: public housing is crumbling
○Results of policy choices which are obscured due to the negative stigma against
tenants
●Myth: public housing assist the wrong people
●Myth: high rise public housing in unlivable
●Myth: public housing is a top-down imposition by government bureaucrats
Busting 3 Myths about Public Housing
●1. Don’t blame the high rises
○When cities were losing population and jobs and crime rates were rising, public
housing was stereotypes as hotbeds of violence
○Housing complexes actually had lower rates of crime than surrounding
neighborhoods
●2. You need a balance among adults and kids
○High ratio of children to adults
○Teenage vandalism and petty crime is usually kept in check by parents but not
when there are more kids than adults
○High youth density made public housing hard to govern, more expensive to
maintain and less appealing to live
●3. Public housing residents organize… for more police
○Do public housing residents hate the police?
○In most cases officers were more likely to be people of color and many actually
lived in public housing
○Organizing strikes and sit in to demand the hire of more officers
○During peak years of tenant activism, ranks of housing police grew by 60%
The Case for Reparations
●Jim Crow Mississippi, between 1882 and 1968, more people were lynched in Mississippi
than other state
Document Summary
Liberals believe public housing concentrates poverty and epitomizes top-down, bland urban planning. While conservatives see it as one of the world"s last socialistic schemes . More than 2 million people live in publicly owned rental housing. Myth: public housing residents want to escape it. Realistically nearly all the nations public housing have wait lists. Results of policy choices which are obscured due to the negative stigma against tenants. Myth: public housing assist the wrong people. Myth: high rise public housing in unlivable. Myth: public housing is a top-down imposition by government bureaucrats. When cities were losing population and jobs and crime rates were rising, public housing was stereotypes as hotbeds of violence. Housing complexes actually had lower rates of crime than surrounding neighborhoods. You need a balance among adults and kids. Teenage vandalism and petty crime is usually kept in check by parents but not when there are more kids than adults.
